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He smiled a little and then turned his face up into the sun again, his eyes closed. 'Feels
good.'
'I think it always does when you know the damn winter's almost right on top of you.'
He nodded, and we were silent for a while.
'When I get out of here,' Andy said finally, 'I'm going where it's warm all the time.' He
spoke with such calm assurance you would have thought he had only a month or so left to
serve. 'You know where I'm goin', Red?'
'Nope.'
'Zihuatcnejo,' he said, rolling the word softly from his tongue like music. 'Down in
Mexico. It's a little place maybe twenty miles from Playa Azul and Mexico Highway 37.
It's a hundred miles north-west of Acapulco on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the
Mexicans say about the Pacific?'
I told him I didn't
They say it has no memory. And that's where I want to finish out my life, Red. In a warm
place that has no memory.'
He had picked up a handful of pebbles as he spoke; now he tossed them, one by one, and
watched them bounce and roll across the baseball diamond's dirt infield, which would be
under a foot of snow before long.
'Zihuatanejo. I'm going to have a little hotel down there. Six cabanas along the beach, and
six more set further back, for the highway trade. I'll have a guy who'll take my guests out
charter fishing. There'll be a trophy for the guy who catches the biggest marlin of the
season, and I'll put his picture up in the lobby. It won't be a family place. It'll be a place
for people on their honeymoons ... first or second varieties.'
'And where are you going to get the money to buy this fabulous place?' I asked. 'Your
stock account?'
He looked at me and smiled. 'That's not so far wrong,' he said. 'Sometimes you startle me,
Red.'
'What are you talking about?'
There are really only two types of men in the world when it comes to bad trouble,' Andy
said, cupping a match between his hands and lighting a cigarette. 'Suppose there was a
house full of rare paintings and sculptures and fine old antiques, Red? And suppose the
guy who owned the house heard that there was a monster of a hurricane headed right at it.
One of those two kinds of men just hopes for the best The hurricane will change course,
he says to himself. No right-thinking hurricane would ever dare wipe out all these
Rembrandts, my two Degas horses, my Jackson Pollocks and my Paul Klees.
Furthermore, God wouldn't allow it. And if worst comes to worst, they're insured. That's
one sort of man. The other sort just assumes that hurricane is going to tear right through
the middle of his house. If the weather bureau says the hurricane just changed course, this
guy assumes it'll change back in order to put his house on ground zero again. This second
type of guy knows there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for
the worst.'
I lit a cigarette of my own. 'Are you saying you prepared for the eventuality?'
'Yes. I prepared for the hurricane. I knew how bad it looked. I didn't have much time, but